This post is in reference to NewTeeVee’s post “YouTube Up 32% Year-over-Year”, The article basically states that according to hitwise, YouTube has 73.18% viewership of online video in the month of March 2008 as opposed to 55.28% in March 2007.

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Al Ries (legendary marketing guru) in his book title The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding talks about The Law of Singularity. In summary, the internet is like a political race. Second place is no place. There is no room for number-two brands on the internet. Today when you say “internet video” automatically “YouTube comes to mind.

How do you becomes #1 brand and leader in your category online? For starters…you have to tell what your category is. Its always a good idea to tell your market what exactly should come to mind when they see your name/brand.

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What does this have to do with you?

ONE – For all those of you who have websites, blogs, videos, or whatever online, how are you trying to position yourself in your viewers eyes that is unique, different , and/or outstanding from the others out there?

To many times we’ve seen a blog out there about one’s life, rants, or simply reflections. What’s so great and different about your content and material that one should read it? You know the answer? Great! Tell the viewers when they see your stuff.

For all of you that have dawah projects out there, this concept applies to you to.

TWO – Publish your videos on YouTube and don’t worry about publishing anywhere else unless you’re going to search engine optimization for your website…then you may want to publish on all of the video sharing services online with a link coming back to your website. If you want to build an audience then publish content regularly and request people to subscribe to your channel. The more subscribers you have to your channel, the greater your influence will be and the more people will watch your videos.

What if you publish content that is more than 10 mins?

There are two ways of going about this. Get someone who has an older account on YouTube and has the ability to publish videos over 10 mins to publish your videos on their channel for you, or you canpublish on another video service (I recommend Blip.tv)…or…You can do both! (That’s what I’m doing)

Also, I would recommend you publish content on Blip.tv along with YouTube because of the fact that you can get people to subscribe to you via iTunes. ipods are a big market. Take advantage of it!

Assalamu alaikum wa rahmitullaih wa barakatuh,

Alhamdulillah, It’s been a fun experience being a contributer to the blog. However, I have a lot of projects going (and not to mention a lot of papers to write). So at least temporarily I don’t think I can commit to being a contributer. Jazak Allah khair br. Belal for the opportunity. And InshaAllah I hope that you all will keep me in your Dua and you inshaAllah will be in mine!

Barak Allahu feekom,

wassalam,

Shirien

Keeping series in order can be a task in and of itself. Finding certain videos in a particular series can be more than a few clicks away. Its a good idea to create a playlist of different videos and share that play list with other people so they can embed the entire series on their websites and blogs, making it easier on the viewers to find what they are looking for.

Below are links to play lists I’ve created for the following series:

• Desert Rose
• Darkness2Light
• The Opener
• AlMaghrib Trailers and Videos (go to gemreel.com to see it in action)

Go ahead and embed them on your websites and share it with other people.